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CABINET MEETINGS 
UNDER PRESIDENT POLK 



HENRY BARRETT LEARNED 



Keprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association 
for 1914, Volume I, pages 229-242 




WASHINGTON 






out 

Acfhw 

ATAY IS W7 



XIII. I AIIINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK. 



By HENRY BARRETT LEARNED, 

Washing to , D. C. 



229 



CABINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK.» 



By Henry Barrett Learned. 



The Cabinet meeting has always been to contemporaries other than 
Cabinet members something of a mystery. Rumors of proceedings 
and routine, the truth or falsity of which can not readil}' be tested, 
keep in circulation and accordingly afford an attractive theme for 
gossip and guessing. Regular days for Cabinet councils have long 
been understood to be Tuesdays and Fridays. These were taken for 
granted as such under the present administration until some one 
ventured the assertion early in the autumn of 1913 that President 
Wilson had departed from one more precedent by abandoning Cabi- 
net meetings altogether. Whatever its source, this gossip-compelling 
statement fell upon listening ears. In the course of a few months, 
however, with an authentic sound as though coming from the White 
House, word once more got into print that the President wished it 
understood that meetings of the Cabinet were being held twice a 
week on the regular days, and that no member of the council ab- 
sented himself from the meetings in Washington on Cabinet days 
without good reasons. This second rumor with respect to the regu- 
larity of Cabinet meetings from the opening of Mr. Wilson's term 
I was able accidentally to verify as correct. But as a rule the on- 
looker in Washington has no specially reliable sources of informa- 
tion about the nature of contemporary Cabinet meetings, for every 
administration is bound to have and to hold sacred — at least for a 
time — its Cabinet secrets. 

On the other hand, secrets, especially such as must be shared by 
a group of official advisers and men active in public affairs, have 
a way of coming to light in the course of years. 

If there's a hole in a' your coats, 

I rede ye tent it ; 
A chiel's amang ye takin' notes, 

And, faith, he'U prent it. 

1 For a much more extended study of cabinet meetings, the reader is referred to the 
author's paper entitled " Some Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting," printed in Troceedlngs of 
the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. XVIII, Washington, 1915. 

231 



232 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

Atjainst the keeping: of diaries there is no hiw even to members of 
the President's Cabinet. In a few instances the proceedings of Cabi- 
net meetings have been carefully formulated by order and placed on 
file for future reference. One of these instances has long been known 
to readers of the ^lemoirs of Jcjlin Quincy Adams. ^ Two others may 
be seen in the manuscript sources of President Polk's and President 
Andrew Johnson's respective terms. - With some effort in a variety 
of directions the historian to-day is able to obtain glimpses, gleaned 
from the accounts of Cabinet members and from the intimate writ- 
ings of the Presidents themselves, of many hundreds of sessions of 
the Cabinet from the epoch of Washington down to comparatively 
recent times. There were no fewer than 65 meetings of Washing- 
ton's Cabinet — rather more than 40 of these held during the mo- 
mentous year 1793 alone — of which there is some record. ^ In his 
Memoirs John Quincy Adams left accounts, often filled with much 
detail, regarding discussions, of perhaps 180 sessions of the Cabinet 
of ^lonroe (1817-1825), and of about 65 sessions during his term as 
President, which immediately followed. There are not far from 
450 Cabinet meetings noticed in Gideon Welles's extensive diary, 
which covers the greater portion of the period of Presidents Lincoln 
and Johnson. To such sorts of material must the investigator turn 
who would make even an approach to some understanding of the 
Cabinet meeting. In the following paper I shall confine my con- 
siderations of the Cabinet meeting to the four-year term of President 
Polk. 

Polk was 49 years old when in March, 1845, he entered upon his 
duties as President — the youngest incumbent of the Presidency up 
to that time. Ten years before he had been chosen Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, where for the following four years 
(1835-1839) he became widely acquainted, revealed to his party 
ability and remarkable industry, was pronounced in approving many 
of tiie measures of the Van Buren administration, and maintained 
and ripened a friendship for Andrew Jackson, which, begun many 
yeai's before when he was a very young man and strengthened by 
intimacy with and support of President Jackson, lasted without 
a break until Jackson's death in June, 1845. Though a native of 
North Carolina, he had lived for the better part of his life in Ten- 
nessee, and for a single teiin (18;]9-1S41) filled the governorship of 
that State. Influenced much by Jackson's counsel during the months 



> Memoirs, V, 5. 1.3, 15, March, 1820. 

M'olk I'apprK, MSS. Division, Library of Consrosp, Vol. 77, February 22. 1S4S. Of. 
I'olk's I)lary, IH, 34«V-347 ; A. Johnson Papers, MSS. Division, L. of C, A'ol. llo. under 
flates of .Tune 18-10. 1867. 

•Based upon an exaralnntlon of manuscript materials on the subject now In possession 
of the Miiri\iHcrlptH IMvWion of the Library of Congress and upon printed letters of the 
leading Btatcsmen of the time. 



CABINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK. 233 

of his canvass and even after his election, Polk went back to Jeffer- 
son for his ideal of a statesman. And he set himself to the task 
of carrying out the principles of the Republican party as it was 
usually referred to in the organ of the administration, the Wash- 
ington Daily Union. ^ , 

Few men [said a writer in the Union of IMay 13, 1845J are capaltle of the 
labors which he [Pollv] encounters; and few in his phice would dev(ite tiieni- 
selves with the same assiduity to the public service. He works from 10 to 12 
hours in every 24. He holds two Cabinets a weelv. He sees visitors two 
hours every day when the Cabinet is not employed. ... ITo is also in 
frequent communion with his secretaries. 

Gossip though this was, it came from a source almost certain to 
be inspired by real information, for Thomas Ritchie, editor of the 
newdy established paper, had been induced to come from Richmond 
to Washington for the direct purpose of giving the Administration 
an official organ — a mouthpiece through which even the President 
might occasionally address his party and the people. And in fact 
more than once Polk outlined an article for the Union. - 

The publication of Polk's Diarj?^ in 1910, appearing about 60 years 
after its author's untimely death, in June, 1849, has already quick- 
ened interest in Polk and will probably tend to raise him as a man 
in the estimation of historians. For glimpses of nearly 400 sessions 
of the Cabinet, set down b}^ the actual director of such sessions, it 
remains a unique record. Revealing no such range of view or literary 
facility as Adams's Memoirs, with little of the skill of characteriza- 
tion or the bitterness toward foes of Welles's Diary, it is, neverthe- 
less, rather more directly informing than either of the foregoing 
works in the matter of routine practices and specific discussions of 
cabinet problems. There is an entry, however brief, for every day 
that Polk occupied the Executive Mansion from Tuesday. August 26, 
1845, the day that the diary was begun, until Sunday, ]\Iarch 4, 1849, 
when Gen. Taylor succeeded him in office. Cabinet sessions were 
invariably noted, sometimes with careful and extended detail. It 
shows Polk and his counsellors at work. 

Between early December, 1844, and the following March 4 mem- 
bers of the Cabinet were selected. There were six men in the first 
assembled group: James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of 
State — a shrewd and experienced politician, aged 54, taken from 
the leadership of his party in the Senate, ambitious of future dis- 
tinctions which in the course of years he obtained, headstrong and 
vacillating; Robert J. W^alker, of Mississippi, Secretary of the 

• The first issue came out in Washington on Thursday night, May 1, 1845. 

= Diary, I, 351-352. April 24, 1846. " It is the second or third time since I have been 
President that I have sketched an article for the paper, I do so in this instance to allay, 
if possible, the excitement which I learned the article In yesterday's Union had pro- 
duced • • *." 



234 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

Treasury — youngest member, aged 44, like Buchanan a nadve of 
Pennsylvania and taken from the Senate, allied by marriage to 
Vice President Dallas, a man of great promise, destined tx) win solid 
claims to statesmanship as chief author of the tariff act of 1846 and 
largely responsible for the formulation of the act which provided in 
184!* for the organization of the Department of the Interior;^ Wil- 
liam L. Marcy, of New York, Secretary of War — oldest member of 
the group, aged 58, a veteran of the War of 1812, former Senator, and 
governor of his State, later chosen Secretary of State by Franklin 
Pierce, whom he served ably for four years; John Y. Mason of Vir- 
ginia, Attorney General — aged 46, the single member of Tyler's 
Cabinet retained by Polk, later (1846) transferred to the secretary- 
ship of the Xavy ; Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, Postmaster General — 
an experienced member of the House of Representatives, from which 
Polk summoned him at the age of 52, watchful of the President's 
minor political interests and a bosom friend; and George Bancroft, 
of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Navy — former candidate for the 
governorship of his Commonwealth, aged 45, an historian already 
favorably known, admirer of Polk, though a so-called Van Buren 
man, and satisfactorj' as a representative of the New England sec- 
tion. Two others changed slightly the color of this first group: 
Nathan Clifford, of Maine, at the age of 43, was made Attorney 
General, succeeding Mason, who was transferred to the Navy head- 
ship. He added marked ability, for he was one of the very able 
lawvers of his time, helping in 1 18 to negotiate the final treaty 
with Mexico, attaining in 1858 to the position of Associate Justice 
of the Supreme Court, and finally serving his countr}^ in 1877 as 
president of the Electoral Commission. He was in turn succeeded 
in tlie attorney generalship by Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, aged 52, 
recently unsuccessful candidate for the governorship of his native 
State. Toucey reappeared in national politics in 1852 as Senator, 
and closed his public career as Buchanan's Secretary of the Navy 
f lom 1857. The average age of this Cabinet was 49 years. 

Tt proved to be an able group of advisers and was reasonably har- 
monious. But its ability in general would certainly have been in- 
creased (just as its harmony would probably have decreased), had 
it contained such leaders as Silas Wright of New York, Calhoun of 
South Carolina, Lewis Cass of Michigan, or Thomas H. Benton of 
Missouri. To Wright was tendered the secretaryship of the Treas- 
ury as early as December 7,^ which was refused. To the others no 
offers of Cabinet positions were probably made. The men whom 
l*olk selected were picked with reference to his declared interests in 
tariff reduction, in a policy of expansion which favored the acquisi- 

' H. B. Lrarned. The ProHldcnt'B Cabinet (1912), 275-287. 
Polk Papers, MSB. Vol. 68. 



CABINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK. 235 

tion of Oregon and the annexation of Texas, and in the political and 
economic needs of the South and Southwest. Slavery he took no de- 
cided stand upon — that issue he desired as far as possible to avoid. 
Although it came at times into Cabinet discussions, Polk's Diary is 
notably casual upon the topic. Pledged himself from his nomination 
to a single term in office, the President forewarned his prospective 
counselors on no account to take advantage of their respective posi- 
tions as advisers in order to promote ambition which had for its end 
either the presidency or the vice-presidency. " Should any member 
of my Cabinet," he wrote, " become a candidate for the presidency 
or vice presidency of the United States, it will be expected upon the 
happening of such an event, that he will retire from the Cabinet." ^ 
x\.bsences from the seat of government he pledged them to make 
always as brief as possible, for he disproved of the practice of leav- 
ing the management of the departments to chief clerks or other less 
responsible persons. 

Has there been any President since 1789 who stuck so persistently 
to his tasks as did President Polk? During the four-year period he 
was not outside Washington for more than about six weeks. How 
many Presidents have confined themselves to vacations averaging 10 
days a year? Polk spent a day at Mount Vernon in the spring of 
1845 ; - late in August, 1846, for about a week he was at Old Point 
Comfort; in May-June, 1847, he made a visit of nine days to the 
University of North Carolina of which he and his Cabinet associate, 
John Y. Mason, were graduates in 1819 ; ^ he went for a fortnight's 
tour to New England, primarily to attend a Masonic celebration, in 
June-July, 1847; and finally in the late summer (August) of 1848, 
wearied and restless, he spent 10 days at Bedford Springs. Pa. 
There is no evidence of other absences on his part from the seat of 
government. Moreover, there was no cessation of Cabinet meetings 
while he was there, from the August day on which the Diary opens. 
The regularity of Cabinet sessions, regular and " special," becomes 
positively irksome in the record. These are Polk's words: 

No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have 
any leisure. If he intrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates 
constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the 
Government myself rather than intrust the public business to subordinates, and 
this makes my duties very great.* 

This was not idle sentiment on Polk's part, for the President's 
theory and practice were in accord, as the record of the Administra- 

1 See the circular letter of Polk to prospective Cabinet associates, dated February 17, 
1845, and printed in full in The Works of James Buchanan (ed. John Bassett Moore), 
VI, 110-111. 

2 Diary, II, 87. See also Washington Daily Union, Aug. 19, 1846, II, 370. 

* Washington Daily Union, June 2, 1847, et seq. 

* Diary, IV, 261, Dec. 29, 1848. 



236 



AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



tion clearly proves. He was ill at times during his last year in office, 
and one may reasonably conclude that he was suffering from the 
effects of his incessant and tireless labors. 

Whether Polk was the first President to introduce regularity into 
Cabinet sessions I do not feel certain, for as yet I have not examined 
with sufficient care the practices of the Cabinet during Van Buren's 
and Tyler's resjiective terms. Previous to 1837 it may be positively 
stated that there was no regularity in this respect. Polk's Cabinet 
met as a rule every week throughout the year if the President was 
not himself away from "Washington. It made no difference to him 
whether Congress was or was not in session. On Tuesdays and Sat- 
urdays at 11 o'clock in the forenoon it assembled unsummoned and 
in accordance with a settled custom. In one year alone— 1840, during 
which war with Mexico was begun — the council met about 114 times. 
In 1848, the year which witnessed the treaty settlement of Guada- 
lou^De-Hidalgo, there w^ere approximately 120 meetings. As reckoned 
through the evidence of the Diary there were about 173 meetings on 
Tuesdays and 168 meetings on Saturdays. All others, perhaps 50, 
were known as " special " meetings, and were summoned on any one 
of the other days of the week. The following table, confined to the 
Diary record alone, will indicate at a glance the results of the whole 
enumeration : 





1845 


1846 


1S47 


1848 


1849 


Total 






4 
2 

50 
4 
2 
1 

51 


i 

47 
2 
2 
2 

44 


5 


49 
4 
3 
5 

48 


' ' " 9 
1 
1 

' 9' 


9 






10 


Tues'iciVs 


18 
4 


173 




15 


TUursd lys 


8 


Fridavs. 


1 

16 


9 




1G8 






Total 


39 


114 


99 


120 


20 


392 







It was against Polk's strict Sabbatarian views to summon the 
Cabinet to Sunday sessions, but occasionally, in 1846 and in 1848, 
the two most momentous j'^ears of his administration, he found it 
necessary to do so against his will. He was never resigned to miss- 
ing attendance at church at 11 o'clock Sunday mornings. Regular 
sessions were seldom over before 2 p. m. ISIany meetings will be 
found, however, sitting as late as 3 and even 4 o'clock. Four and 
five hour meetings were regarded as long. Polk dined at 4 p. m. 
Only once is there record of a six-hour meeting — that convened at 
9.30 a. m. on Friday, July 9, 1847. 

Tho subject which T submitted for consideration [wrote the President] 
was the conduct of Gen. Scott and Mr. Tri.st. and the nnjrry personal contro- 
versy into wliicii these two functionaries had allowed themselves to be en- 
guf^ed. Dispatches from Gen. Scott to the Secretary of War, and from Mr^ 



CABINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK. 237 

Trist to the Secretary of State, received durinf? my late tour to the lOastern 
States, were read. They exhibited a wretched state of things. So far from the 
harmony prevailing between these two ofTicers, they are engaged in a violent 
personal correspondence. 

Opinions differed as to what should be done. The President was 
ready with the suggestion that both men be recalled. In the dis- 
cussion Marcy and Buchanan assumed the lead, and both of these 
advisers, followed by the other members of the Cabinet, opposed the 
suggestion. The Cabinet had its way, the President yielding, but 
not without adding his thought as to the possible desirability of 
sending some such capable assistant to Trist as Senator Pierre Soule, 
of Louisiana.^ The episode of the quarrel is well enough known to 
history,- though the way it touched the Cabinet is a contribution of 
this intimate record. 

In view of the tasks of the administration, Polk's Cabinet sessions 
were on the whole brief as compared, for example, with the slow- 
gaited and occasionally very prolonged sessions of Monroe's Cabi- 
net.^ Seldom were meetings omitted on regular days, even with only 
two Cabinet advisers in Washington. The laying of the corner 
stone of the Smithsonian Institution* and the public funeral of 
John Quincy Adams ^ were among occasions when it seemed only 
fitting to omit meetings. 

Unlike the meetings of John Quincy Adams's Cabinet, which were 
devoted to a few rather specific problems and were neither frequent 
nor at all regular, those of Polk were usually alive with a consider- 
able variety of business and discussion. The epoch was alert. Its 
problems, especially those which were generated by the Oregon 
Question and the War with Mexico, were grave and complicated, bur- 
dened with consequences of a doubtful and very far-reaching kind. 
Large subjects came inevitably before the advisers — the tariff, Texas, 
Oregon, California, Army troubles, slavery, the treaty with Mexico — 
some of them demanding the enunciation of more or less definite at- 
titudes on the part of the Executive. On the other hand, there were 
also numerous matters of minor, if not occasionallj'^ of petty, signifi- 
cance. The Cabinet heard much political gossip and discussed it 
pretty freely; it watched intently the proceedings of Congress and 
guided itself to some extent by what it observed. The President kept 
in close touch with party leaders in both the House and the Senate. 
Even the aged Calhoun was admitted early in 1846 to a session of 

* Diary, III, 75-79. Cf. Jesse S. Reeves, American Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk 
(1907), 315-316. 

« Schouler, History of the L'nited States (rev. ed.), V, 51-53. 
3 See J. Q. Adams's Memoirs, IV, 37, 168 ; VI, 389 ff. 

* Diary, III, 1-2. Saturday, May 1, 1847. Secretary Wallier was unable to attend the 
ceremony. See Washington Daily Union. May 10, 1847. 

6 Ibid., Ill, 362-363. Saturday, Feb. 26, 1848. 



238 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

the Cabinet.* Senator Benton throughout the first two j^ears of the 
administration was many times in conference with Polk, as was 
Senator Cass in the hitter years. Vice-President DaHas was often 
consulted informally, but there is no evidence that he ever attended 
a session of the council. Thomas Ritchie, of the Union, was care- 
fully consulted on various occasions, and allowed presidential secrets 
to slip into his partisan publication, at times much to Polk's dis- 
gust. We get glimpses of the figure of Andrew Johnson, of Tennes- 
see, flitting in and out of the Executive Mansion even thus early — 
distrusted and disliked by Polk. Johnson and his Tennessee col-- 
leagues " seem to assume to themselves the right to judge of the ap- 
pointments in Tennessee," remarked the Piesidunt. '* and to denounce 
them among Members of Congress and in boaiding houses as though 
they were responsible for them. I think it fortunate," he concluded,, 
"that they have now learned that their course has not been unob- 
served by me." ^ Polk and his counselors, especially Buchanan, who 
became ambitious for the Presidency when he discovered that he 
could not easily obtain an appointment to the Supreme Court, 
scanned carefully many newspaper criticisms, and even attempted to 
dictate to some variety of newspapers. The subject of office-seeking 
politicians, haunting Polk day and night throughout his term, could 
not help coming at times into conciliar discussions. 

The four annual messages, prepared by Polk promptly and with 
remarkable care, were not only submitted to the Cabinet but to men 
of influence and discretion outside that body — to Vice-President 
Dallas, Editor Ritchie, Senators Benton and Cass, and to many 
others. The fourth message,'' which among presidential papers must 
always be reckoned remarkable — the President's valedictory to his 
Democratic followers as well as to the Nation — was given slow and 
long attention. The President yielded his conxictions neither easily 
nor as a rule for petty reasons. Politics influenced him. But he 
seldom forgot principles even though he was obliged to sacrifice the 
friendship and influence of men as powerful as Senator Benton and 
the assistance to some extent of his Secretary of State, Buchanan. 
A less prudent man would probably have failed to hold through the 
administration three such ambitious and able advisers as Buchanan, 
Marcy. and Walker, for at one time or another they were all ready 
to abandon their places. 

Votes in Cabinet sessions were infrequent.* Like most Presidents 
before and since his time, Polk asked now and again for written 
opinions on technical matters of law from his attorneys-general." 

» niary, I, 1«1. Jan. 10. 

»Ib!(l., II, 41. July 21. 1R4(!. 

» Uichnrd.son, Mowsiiros and Papers, IV, G29-670. 

« Diary, III, 281. 

•11*1(1., II, 79; IV, 202. 



CABINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK. 239 

But he seldom, if ever, called for written opinions from the rest of 
his advisers. On this point his words are nearly conclusive : " I 
have never called for any written opinions from my Cabinet, pre- 
ferring to take their opinions, after a discussion, in Cabinet, and in 
presence of each other. In this way harmony of opinion is more 
likely to exist." ^ 

Thus a practice begun by Washington and characteristic of sev- 
eral of Washington's more immediate successoi-s was voluntarily 
abandoned by Polk. 

Polk's party was not a little aroused over the fact that two such 
pronounced Whigs as Generals Scott and Taylor were likely to gain 
most of the honors in the war. Hence an effort was made to have 
created a new office of lieutenant-general — an acting general-in- 
chief in the field. Polk commended the project. It was introduced 
into Congress but there failed. And Benton, who was to have had 
the new command, placed the blame for its failure upon Secretaries 
Buchanan, Walker, and Marcy.^ The proof of this charge it would 
probably be difficult, if not impossible, to establish. Wliile this whole 
matter was pending, the President's mind being disturbed over the 
question of Benton's possible right to precedence over the Whig 
generals actually in the field, Richard Rush, then an elderly man 
of 65 about to take up his duties as newly appointed Minister to 
France, spent the late evening of Tuesday, January 19, IS-iT, with 
Polk. Once Attorney General under President Madison and later 
serving President J. Q. Adams for four years as Secretary of the 
Treasury, Rush, as an experienced Cabinet officer revealed quickly his 
interest in the knotty problem of precedence which at the moment was 
disturbing Polk. He related at length the story of a Cabinet session 
under President Adams about 19 years before, in which a sim- 
ilar problem had to be disposed of. In both instances there were 
contentious factions in and outside the respective Cabinets. The 
frank statements of Rush, his clear recollections as well as the 
applicability of his story to the situation — all moved the President's 
interest. He confided the interview to his Diary in a way to indicate 
his ability as an accurate reporter, for the account of Adams's Cabi- 
net session as taken down from Rush's narration of it, agrees in 
essential particulars with the account of the same session which 
President Adams himself had written in his Memoirs. Thus might 
a cabinet discussion of one administration be transmitted and made 
helpful to another many years removed.^ 

1 Ibid., IV, 131. September 23, 1848. 

2 Thirty Years' View, II, 679. The subject was commented on in the Washington Daily 
Union of March 11, 1847, letters between Polk and Benton there printed. 

» Cf. Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, VII, 50&-507. April 14, 1828. 



240 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

It was the rule of the administration to admit no one to Cab- 
inet sessions outside the circle of regular advisers. But J. Knox 
Walker, the President's private secretary, was frequently present^ 
just as Col. W. G. Moore, Johnson's secretary 20 years later, was 
likewise present on many occasions.^ Perhaps Tobias Lear attended 
Washington's council, although there is no record, so far as I know, 
of his attendance. When in future the story of President Wilson's 
administration can be written from authwatic records shall we learn 
of the attendance of Mr. Joseph Tumulty at Cabinet councils? As 
I have already pointed out,^ Senator Calhoitn took part in a Cab- 
inet discussion over the Oregon situation on Saturday, January 10, 
184G — an exception to Polk's rule. Benton declared that he was 
present at a Cabinet session in the autumn of the same year making 
objections to a particular policy.* This rests on Benton's statement 
alone, and without corroborative evidence is of no significance. It 
is true that the assembled Cabinet listened to outsiders either just 
before or just after their regular session for the purpose usually of 
obtaining special information not easy otherwise to acquire. Brig. 
Gen. Philip Kearny appeared before them,^ likewise Maj. Gen. James 
Shields.'' Mayor William Winston Seaton and sundry public men 
were received by the Cabinet in the autumn of 1848." Thomas G. 
Clemson, son-in-law of Calhoun, just returned from his post as 
charge d'affaires in Belgium, was introduced to the Cabinet.^ And 
Senator Spencer Jarnagin, of Tennessee, and Representative Horace 
Wheaton, of New York, as members of the Committee on Enrolled 
Bills, performed their formal tasks in the presence of the council.* 
Once Nicholas P. Trist, then clerk in the Department of State, but 
soon to start on his special mission to Mexico as the President's 
])rivate envoy, was summoned into a session for the purpose of en- 
lightening the Cabinet as to the exact meaning of a Spanish letter.^** 

Attention may be called to a matter of policy extending over many 
sessions of the Cabinet, in which the President revealed his inde- 
pendence and principle. It may not be at once recalled that there 
was in 1847-8 a widespread and vigorous movement, fostered by 
many prominent and influential politicians, to force the President to 
the task of absorbing the whole of Mexico. Polk was an expansion- 
ist of a pronounced type, but this project appears to have been not 



•Diary, II, 486. Apr. 22, 1847. 

•American Historical Review (October, 1913), XIX, 98 et scq. 

» Supra, p. 237. 

•Thirty Years' View, II, 09.3. 

•Diary, III. 168. Sept. 12, 1847. 

•Ibid., Ill, 261. Dec. 28, 1847. 

*Ibld., IV, 125. Sept. 19. 

•11)1(1., IV, 196. Nov. 14, 1848. 

•11)1(1., I, 47, r,\. ,Tuly 2."), 1840. 

»Ibid., II. 432. Mar. 20, 1847. 



CABINET MEETINGS UNDER PRESIDENT POLK. 241 

finally approved by him. That we escaped annexing Mexico in 
1848 was due to some variety of causes. But not the least important 
of these was that Polk effectually controlled the policy of his ad- 
visers, for two of his ablest assistants, Buchanan and R. J. Walker, 
tried to prevent a settlement with Mexico on the terms of the treaty 
negotiated by Nicholas P. Trist, in accordance wjth instructions 
given to Trist in April, 1847, at the time when Trist had been sent 
on his treaty-making mission.^ 

In concluding this slight glimpse of the routine of Polk's conciliar 
sessions, I wish to quote a passage from John F. H. Claiborne's Life 
and Correspondence of John A. Quitman, for it contains, besides 
error, some elements of truth well worth observing. Of Polk, Clai- 
borne writes : 

He was a political martinet, a rigid disciplinarian. ... He was a man 
of ability, but a man of expediency. . . . Polk was grave almost to sad- 
ness, self-restrained, and chilling. . . . [He] was indebted for his eleva- 
tion to his energy, his circumspection, his capacity for labor, his fidelity to 
party, and, more than all, to the influence of Gen. Jackson. . . . He had 
a vigorous and able Cabinet — one of the ablest ever assembled -around any 
executive . . . but he can be regarded as a man of mediocrity . . . exempt 
from positive vices, remarkable for his prudence, and a thorough master of the 
strategy of politics. . . . He, nevertheless, in four years, witnessed the decay 
of his popularity, and no one but himself dreamed of his reelection. . . .' 

There is undoubtedly truth in the application of " martinet " to 
President Polk. He was a stickler for regularity in administrative 
practices — remarkably vigilant in keeping himself and his intimate 
assistants at work throughout a trying four-year term. One is safe 
in assuming from such evidence as we find that the Cabinet never 
met without the President. As the President kept his hand on a 
great many matters, so he w^as generally prepared to be the real 
director of discussions and the author of the administration's atti- 
tude or policy so far as the Executive Department was concerned. 
He had several conspicuously able assistants about him whose aid he 
sought and could accept. But if one may trust impressions derived 
largely from the Diary, Polk was never overpowered by an}^ one of 
these able men. It was the President who at length usually domi- 
nated the situation by his ability to grasp details understandingly. 
In the Cabinet council he was guide and master. Principles he cher- 

^ See " The Proposed Absorption of Mexico in 1847-8," by the late Prof. Edward G. 
Bourne in his Essays in Historical Criticism, 1901. This paper was based upon a study 
of Polli's Diary while still in manuscript. Prof. W. E. Dodd, in a paper entitled " The 
West and the War with Mexico," in Trans, of the Illinois State Historical Society for the 
year 1912 (pp. 15-23), thinks that Polls was eager to annex Mexico after the treaty had 
been accepted on Mar. 10, 1848. Possibly. Relying on Prof. Bourne's researches. Prof. 
J. S. Reeves remarks (American Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk, p. 325) : " Trist's 
assumption that Polk desired the absorption of all Mexico has been proven to be baseless." 

«I, 228-235, passim. 

30000°— 16 16 



242 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

ished and worked for. Ceremonies he disliked. But he was in- 
sistent upon such forms as aided him and his officials in getting 
things done. He was solenm and serious, at times much overworked. 
But can he be fairly termed "a man of mediocrity"? If ever a 
record so largely made up, as is this Diary, of observations on Cabi- 
net sessions could prove that its author filled " the unforgiving min- 
ute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run," this has done so. At 
any rate, it will help to mark Polk as the most important figure in 
the Presidency between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. 



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